


strike sparks

by peacefrog



Series: highlands [3]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anal Sex, Biting, Fantasy, Forest King Hannibal, Forests, M/M, Mythical Beings & Creatures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-11-12 03:53:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11153688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peacefrog/pseuds/peacefrog
Summary: Will opened his eyes and could not see. Darkness consumed him, but the dampness filling his nose was unmistakable. He reached over, searching for Hannibal in the bed, but came back with nothing but a handful of leaves.





	strike sparks

Will stood beneath the hot spray in Hannibal’s shower, lathering soap on his belly, washing the stench of sex and earth from his skin. He stepped out and stood dripping on the mat, looking at himself obscured by fog in the mirror.

He toweled himself dry and dressed and when he emerged from the en-suite, Hannibal was sitting in a chair near the fireplace, gazing into the dark hearth.

“Feeling better?” Hannibal asked, turning his attention to Will.

“Yes, thank you.”

“Mud again, or something different? The sheets are clean, save for your scent and my own.”

“No mud...” Will sighed and took the chair opposite Hannibal. “When I was a kid I’d have the most vivid dreams. I’d go to the most beautiful places. I’d wake up wishing I could live inside of them, you know?”

“The wish to escape to a fantasy world is quite common, in both children and adults.”

“But I never could do it. I’d wake up knowing that they were just dreams and that I couldn’t really go there. But now, with this, I’m… it’s like my body’s really escaping right along with my mind.”

“You believe this forest is a construct of your subconscious desires?”

“Maybe.” Will recalled Hannibal’s warm breath on his skin and choked down a swell of arousal. “Or maybe I’m just losing my mind.”

“I don’t believe that to be true. The simplest way to know for sure, however, is to allow someone to observe you while you sleep. An outside observer will be able to tell you if you’re sleepwalking.”

“I know that I’m not sleepwalking. At least, I wasn’t last night or just now.”

“Even so,” Hannibal said. “It’s best to know for sure.”

“I can just set up a camera, I guess. Record myself.”

“Or I could keep watch over you.”

Will’s heart quickened at the thought. “That’s too much to ask of you.”

“As your therapist, I insist.” Hannibal’s eyes were warm, as though they were lit from within. “I’ll be able to better observe you in the flesh than I would through the cold eye of a camera.”

Will smiled, warmed by Hannibal’s gaze. “Fine,” he said, laughing. “Fine.”

—

After lunch, Will drove back to Wolf Trap, with promises to return to Hannibal’s later when the dogs were settled in. His heavy eyes struggled to stay open, but Will made it home without giving in to the temptation to pull off at a rest stop and nap. Mostly, he didn’t trust himself sleeping out in public. He dragged himself into the house and stood eying his bed for a moment, then thought better of it when the dogs began whining at the back door.

Will slumped down on the back porch while the dogs ran circles in the grass, and was out like a light in an instant.

—

Will woke several hours later to Winston snuffling at his face as the rest of the pack looked on. “Hey...” he said, rubbing at his face and groggily getting to his feet. 

He’d had no dreams to speak of. No forest. No Hannibal. Just blissful, empty black.

—

“Maybe it was just a one-time thing,” Will said. “Well. Two-time thing.”

“Perhaps. Though the frequency of this happening may vary based on a number of factors.”

“You’re making me sound like a science experiment.”

Hannibal smiled. “You are not an experiment, though it may help if you think of yourself as taking part in one. And, as with all experiments, we’ll need hard evidence to prove our hypothesis.”

“And what’s our hypothesis exactly?”

“That you have yet to lose your mind.”

They sat at the table smiling and drinking wine and Will wondered if, in some other world, his body—his very own, and not the body of some alternate self—could also exist there, sleeping. On a bed of moss and leaves and grass next to a Hannibal that was entirely like his own and all at once entirely different.

Looking across at Hannibal and thinking of him as _his own_ , Will flushed, and turned his burning face down into his glass of wine. “So how are we going to do this?”

“You’ll go to sleep in my bed, and I will observe.”

“All night?”

“All night.”

“Don’t you… need to sleep too?”

“I’ll be alright,” Hannibal said. “I assure you.”

—

Will allowed Hannibal’s assurances to carry him up the stairs and into Hannibal’s bed once again. He stripped down to his boxers and crawled between the sheets, choking down a swell of disappointment when Hannibal took a seat in an armchair instead of joining him beneath the covers. 

“Will it bother you if I leave a light on, or would you prefer full dark?”

Will’s blood sizzled at the thought of Hannibal watching him all night, illuminated. “A light will be fine,” he said, pulling the covers up to his chin. “You’re not going to get bored just sitting there?”

“Don’t worry about me, Will. All you have to do is sleep. And hope you wake rested and… clean.”

Something in Hannibal’s tone suggested a certain dark knowledge. Knowledge of exactly what Will and dream-probably-not-a-dream-but-something-else-entirely-Hannibal had been doing. Will pulled the covers up to his nose.

“Goodnight, Dr. Lecter,” Will said, voice muffled by the covers.

“Goodnight, Will. I’ll be here should you need anything at all.”

Sleep came slow at first, and Will lay there in the semi-dark focused on Hannibal’s breathing and his own. Then fast, so fast, like the day turning to night in an instant.

—

Will opened his eyes and could not see. Darkness consumed him, but the dampness filling his nose was unmistakable. He reached over, searching for Hannibal in the bed, but came back with nothing but a handful of leaves.

Through the darkness came a growl. A chill crept through the hut and Will’s hair stood on end.

“Dear Will,” said Hannibal, though he was also growling, and his voice carried with it the edge of the dark, “are you waking?”

“Hannibal?” Will struggled to his feet, backing up until his legs knocked into a table. “Where are you? I can’t see anything.”

“My apologies.” 

Through the dark came a match striking sparks and then a candle breathing flame. In the candlelight, Hannibal was different, though at first Will couldn’t decide what had changed. His eyes, perhaps, and then his smile. He showed his teeth in a grin and the edges had become sharply pointed fangs. And on his head, cast in shadow on the wall, a rack of antlers rose two feet high from atop his head. His long hair flowed around them and down to his shoulders.

“What… what happened to you?”

“The night. Don’t be afraid. I’m not going to hurt you.”

“I don’t think that you’re going to hurt me,” Will said, and he knew that it was true.

“Come here.” Hannibal held out a hand. “I want to show you something.”

Hannibal blew out the candle and led Will out into the light of the moon. Overhead, the round face of it shone like a spotlight, casting the meadow and the forest silver blue. Hannibal led Will into a thicket of trees and down a steep embankment until they reached a stream.

Water trickled gently through the night, joining the crickets in a forest song. Hannibal pulled Will into his arms and dragged his nose along the side of his neck. “You smell as though you’ve washed already,” he said.

“Do I?” Will shuddered, growing half-hard against the heat of Hannibal’s skin.

Hannibal growled, but Will decided it was a happy sound. “Yes,” he said. “But let us wash in the stream anyway.”

The stream was still sun-warm and deep enough to submerge them up to their thighs. Hannibal wet his hair and dipped in his antlers. Will watched the water bead down bone and skin and shine beneath the moon. Hannibal stood bestial and beautiful. Half monster and half man.

Hannibal stepped forward and pressed a hand to Will’s chest. “Your heart is beating very fast.”

Will laughed, just a little, the sound breaking from his chest. “Can you blame me?”

Hannibal moved into Will’s space, smiling, fangs poking out from beneath his lip. “Would you care to tell me how you arrived here, from this Wolf Trap? I have never heard of such a place.”

“It’s a long way from here,” Will said, reaching up to run his fingers along the tines of Hannibal’s antlers. “I think I’m here because I want to be here. With you.”

A growl rose up in Hannibal’s chest. He wrapped his arms around Will and pulled their bodies flush together. His fangs grazed down the side of Will’s neck. “I know that we came here to wash,” he said, “but I fear I’ve been struck with the urge to make you utterly filthy once again.”

Will shivered and his cock swelled. He allowed Hannibal to move them from the stream to the bank, where they knelt in the mud and Hannibal nipped Will with his sharp teeth from neck to shoulder. Will’s flesh burned and a trickle of blood flowed down from where Hannibal’s teeth had pressed in. Hannibal licked a stripe from Will’s collarbone up to his lips. Their mouths crashed together in a growling kiss, Hannibal’s beard catching against Will’s stubble and tickling his lips.

Hannibal’s lips on his own felt somehow more intimate to Will than when they had pleasured him much lower. Will threaded his fingers in Hannibal’s beard and his long hair. Hannibal reached down to stroke Will’s cock and his own together with one strong hand.

And then Hannibal broke the kiss, and pulled away, and Will was being turned around and pushed face down into the mud. Hannibal spread Will’s thighs and angled his ass high in the air. Will couldn’t speak, could barely breathe against the swelling of his heart and his arousal. Hannibal rubbed the thick head of his cock against Will’s hole and slicked it with a long stripe of pre-come.

Hannibal replaced his cock with his fingers and used his own lubrication to spread Will open, first with one finger, then working his way up to three. Will dug his knees and his fingers into the mud. Hannibal dribbled spit down onto Will’s hole and, without preamble, pressed the head of his cock back to Will’s entrance.

Hannibal leaked more than Will thought possible, and he left Will gasping as he pushed in slow, all the way to the hilt. The earth began to swallow them then, and they became the earth, and the earth was all around them. Above, the sky burned. Hannibal gripped Will’s nape and began to fuck.

Will howled, becoming something feral, of ground and of sky. Of tooth and of claw. Hannibal set Will alight from within, a slow and aching burn stoked hotter and higher with every thrust. Together, they burned bright as the sun.

Hannibal’s fingers dug into the flesh of Will’s hips, leaving a crescent of bruises in their wake. With each snap of Hannibal’s hips Will could feel himself cleaving in two, spilling open, rooting himself deep in the earth’s fiery core.

Hannibal bit into Will’s shoulder then, shooting sparks through Will’s veins as though the earth were now taking root in him. Will’s orgasm rolled in as if pulled by the moon, tidal, dragging him under into blissful, pulsing dark.

—

Will bolted upright in bed, gasping for air. In an instant, Hannibal was at his side.

“Will?” Hannibal’s concerned face came into focus in the dim room. He was back in Baltimore, in Hannibal’s bed.

Hannibal pressed the flat of his palm to Will’s chest, feeling his heart hammering there, eyes wide, equally concerned and curious. Will tried to speak, but the syllables and sounds caught in his throat as his lungs gulped down the air. 

Hannibal brought his face to Will’s, close enough for his breath to spill over Will’s tongue. Their eyes met in the lamplight, and Will could barely contain his hunger.

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi on [tumblr](http://crossroadscastiel.tumblr.com)!


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